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Monthly Archives: December 2016

BitcoinDood – Hello, and thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Could you take a moment and introduce yourself, and tell the readers a little about who you are and your relationship to the BelaCoin project?

Ambia Fund –We are the Ambia Fund, a private cryptocurrency investment group. Our intention is to seek out early-stage cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency-related projects that have strong potential and could go much further with some professional funding and guidance. BelaCoin has been our inaugural investment, and since we have yet to find a lead developer, we have had to take a strong hands-on approach in leading BelaCoin.

Our focus is to build up BelaCoin well so that it fits into our own cryptocurrency project: BelaCam. While we do not own the BelaCoin blockchain, BelaCam is a privately owned cryptocurrency startup. As with traditional venture capital, we can have a successful exit if BelaCam gets acquired by a large tech player or in the unlikely but possible event of a BelaCam IPO. We own 100% of the equity of BelaCam, so that is where our investment is likely to provide returns.

BelaCam relies heavily on BelaCoin, so for us to have success in BelaCam, we must first bring BelaCoin to the level of a successful cryptocurrency. The more valuable that BelaCoin is, the more valuable BelaCam is as well. This is important because this creates our incentive to act in the best interest of BelaCoin. If BelaCam gets acquired by Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, or some other tech company, then BelaCoin’s success will then be in their best interest and control. This is where we would step aside and let the tech powerhouse continue to lead and advise BelaCoin.

BitcoinDood – If I’m not mistaken, this project has been around for a little while. Originally started back in 2014 as Bellacoin with two L’s, I remember researching it a bit, and then for whatever reason it just dropped below my radar. I always thought it looked like an interesting project though. Could you tell us a little about what’s been happening with this project, and the sequence of events that have happened since 2014, leading to the present day and the current development of BelaCoin?

Ambia Fund –The original Bellacoin was started by Kris Borodiansky as a charity coin. He had difficulty getting traction, but he built an awesome altcoin wallet for Bellacoin that was one of the most advanced of the time. The coin was taken over from him as he fell into the background, and it ended up in the hands of a user named @androidcryptogames, the man behind Bellachess. We saw an active community and strong potential for Bellacoin, so we reached out to both Kris and @Androidcryptogames before we took the lead of BelaCoin.

We have repeatedly tried to get Kris to rejoin the coin that was once his, but he is happy letting it go. He’s currently doing impressive and admirable things with Neoscoin, although we have let him know that he is still welcome back on the BelaCoin project. Bellachess is still a running and independent project as well.

With the approval of both people above, we have revived BelaCoin. First, we changed the name from Bellacoin to BelaCoin and gave it a new logo. Then, we assembled an advisory team that will help guide our lead developer, whenever we find one. The wallets that Kris coded were no longer working on newer computers, so we sourced help to fix that. The BelaCoin community has grown incredibly fast and strong as well. The 210+ members of our slack (join here: http://BelaCoin.herokuapp.com) are active and insightful supporters. With the http://BelaCoin.org/invest initiative launch and our white paper release in late December/early January, we will be almost done with our work on BelaCoin and ready to pivot our focus towards finishing BelaCam.

BitcoinDood – Researching this project I came across your BellaChess app and I have to say I absolutely love it. Ironically, I was looking for a decent chess app . The Dood is an average player at best and I was looking for an app with different skill levels. That’s exactly what BellaChess provided and I even earn a fraction of BelaCoin for each game played. For any chess players out there, I highly recommend this app, its really cool.

Now it looks like the next app to be developed is BelaCam, which will be an Instagram type app offering BelaCoin rewards for users. Could you talk a little about BelaCam, what it is, and what users can expect from the app? Also, please explain a little about the BelaCoin rewards for using the apps and how BelaCoin ties into the app platforms.

Ambia Fund – In BelaCam, users post photos and receive BelaCoin each time that their photo is ‘liked’ by someone else. The amount will be determined by the donor in the form of a micropayment of BelaCoin. BelaCam is an indirect competitor of Steemit; whereas users in Steemit reward writings and blog posts, BelaCam users reward photo posters in a similar manner. As we discuss in a later question, it is perhaps a more direct competitor to less-established Yours Network and Synero.

While blockchain social media platforms like Steemit have shied away from the idea of micropayments with the belief that they simply cannot obtain the participants, The Ambia Fund operates with a much different mentality. We understand that nearly all ideas are deemed impossible before someone shows them that they can and will happen. This is the same situation for micropayments.

Additionally, as noted in the question, the BelaCam platform is inspired by Instagram. We are targeting only visual media such as pictures and brief videos. This focus is part of one of the huge appeals of BelaCam: simplicity. It is also the huge factor that will propel BelaCam above other styles of blockchain social media. Users will be confronted with a familiar interface and a very straightforward method of both rewarding and being rewarded for the content they share. Ideally, it will feel just as passive and natural to scroll through one’s feed rewarding miniscule amounts of BelaCoin to other users as it would clicking “like” on their pictures. The reliance on micropayments eliminates the need for complex crowd-voting systems such as those used on Steemit, sometimes confusing and deterring users from participating.

With this being said, BelaCam is designed to be the simplest style of all the blockchain social media platforms to-date. By utilizing a proven and attractive model, we doubt we will encounter much trouble reaching success.

BitcoinDood – According to your website it looks like BelaCoin is currently being ran by an advisory board of some well known names in the cryptocurrency and altcoin trading space. Tell us a little about the advisory board and what each member brings to the table?

Ambia Fund –The Board of Advisors was sourced to guide whomever the lead developer will be. The current members of the Board of Advisors are @Notsofast, @Dum, and Trevon James. They all possess unique talents and experiences so that the lead developer will be able to draw from a diverse field of advice.

@Notsofast has great trading and investing insight that he has gained over years of experience. @Dum created a cryptocurrency radio show, so he has had in-depth looks into other altcoins. With all this, he has learned a lot about what makes a great cryptocurrency. Trevon James is quite experienced with social media, possessing over 20,000 followers on Twitter and receiving over 100,000 YouTube impressions each month. He knows a lot about gaining exposure and getting social media traction, so his guidance in those areas will be helpful to the incoming developer.

BitcoinDood – According to the website the project is being backed by the AMBIA Fund. What exactly is the AMBIA Fund and how does it tie into the BelaCoin project?

Ambia Fund –The Ambia Fund is a private investment group that funds early-stage cryptocurrency projects with real potential. Our activities are similar to those of venture capitalists, except we take a more involved approach. When there is a hole in the BelaCoin project, we fill it. If we do not have the skills to solve something, we source the best people who can. That’s how we redesigned BelaCoin’s logo, gave BelaCoin a top-tier website, and fixed the Windows and Mac wallets.

For our BelaCam startup, we needed a cryptocurrency that we could mold to fit our project perfectly. The past 6 weeks have been spent making BelaCoin strong and well-rounded so that it serves BelaCam. The side effect of this is that now BelaCoin is now a great, newly-updated cryptocurrency, ready for further development and expansion.

BitcoinDood – The BelaCoin website currently states that you’re looking for a lead dev for the project. For anyone that might be interested in this position, what is your team looking for, what will be expected of the dev, and how can eligible parties contact you to apply?

Ambia Fund –We need someone who can take on a strong leadership role to maintain BelaCoin while we focus our resources on finishing BelaCam. The lead dev must be able to assume a non-anonymous role and should have relevant experience working with other coins. The developer will be tasked with leading BelaCoin forward, updating the BelaCoin code, and maintaining the wallets. We need someone who will be as passionate about BelaCoin as we have been.

We do not necessarily want a developer who will work for us; rather, we need someone who will work with us. The developer will be the face and leader of BelaCoin with the responsibility of making executive decisions. To put it frankly, it needs its very own Vitalik Buterin.

If you think you can fit the role, please email us at mail@ambiafund.com. If you pass our vetting, we will nominate you as the lead developer. Then, the BelaCoin community (over 210 in our Slack channel) will collectively decide whether to confirm or deny the appointment.

BitcoinDood –BelaCam looks like it’s going to be the crowning jewel of this project. Do you guys currently have a road map in place? What can altcoin investors considering this coin expect as far as development and a BETA release of the app?

Ambia Fund – Our users can expect a roadmap for the BelaCam project to be released in the first few weeks of 2017. Early testing of the platform will commence around that time, with beta versions being released shortly after. We have the site pretty much made; all that’s left is to do design work and add the BelaCoin user transfer functionality.

BitcoinDood – I was pretty impressed with this project as I researched it. Both the apps and coin look like some really interesting tech. Do you have anything you would like to add that hasn’t been covered in the previous questions? Any special features or exciting news you want to share?

Ambia Fund –The Ambia Fund, specifically through the BelaCoin project, is asserting itself as a constructive and positive force in the cryptocurrency world that will better the knowledge and power of widespread groups of users. We are introducing several initiatives that will help to kickstart this facet of our campaign.

The first of these projects is the BelaCoin Invest Initiative, launched on December 21st. We are giving $500 to three separate entrepreneurs with business ideas that integrate BelaCoin. This should draw some of the best minds in the cryptocurrency community to the BelaCoin blockchain and create an additional 3 businesses or services that use BelaCoin.

Additionally, we will be discussing further scholarship programs for students and grants for other deserving individuals. The BelaCoin Invest Initiative is the main campaign to close out 2016, but we plan to announce further grants in early-mid 2017, coinciding with BelaCam news releases.

BitcoinDood – It looks like 2017 is already gearing up to be a very “disruptive” year for social networking and social media platforms. We’ve seen the well received introduction of the Steemit project in 2016. Synereo seems to be off to a rocky start, but looks like it could be an interesting project in 2017. I believe Yours Network is planning some type of release in 2017 as well. With the release of BelaCam we will also have an instagram equivalent for the cryptocurrency space. Do you have any thoughts on how these cryptocurrency incentive platforms are going to shape the future of social networking and social media? Do you think this will be extremely disruptive tech to platforms like Instagram and Facebook when users realize they will be able to get paid for their content?

Ambia Fund – Social media and other online services change the way we communicate more and more everyday. Before we know it, we will find ourselves in a world absent of things like digital cable and newspapers that used to deliver information from source to sink. The trend that humans exchange more information

regarding news, entertainment, etc. over social media as opposed to TV or press is growing at a burgeoning rate. Coupled with the expansion of hot sectors like subscription based streaming services, old methods of information exchange are beginning to fade.

Each day that humans spend more time scrolling through Twitter, Facebook, and other networks in search of useful information, the power of this new form of information exchange is solidified. Whether they know it or not, humans are engaging more frequently in “peer-to-peer” systems than ever before. Humans care more about the opinions and approval of their coworkers, family, and other random peers than those of news sources in some cases, leading to a new hierarchy of information exchange. This decentralization of information, from news sources and authorities to the users themselves, goes hand-in-hand with the overall principles of the cryptocurrency movement. This changing mentality is a principle that will allow BelaCam to succeed.

The next inevitable facet of this decentralization trend is providing a way for the new leaders of information, such as the influential mass-followed users of social media, to be monetarily rewarded for their services. This has been the mission of most blockchain social media so far because the work that content creators do is a part-time or full-time creative occupation worthy of monetized rewards. Depending on the specificity of their subjects and their popularity, their outreach can span across the world and into the minds and hearts of millions of people. Millions of users, following a wide variety of content creators from all subjects are have the potential to participate in the micropayment system that BelaCam will employ. The BelaCam project will be able to connect these leaders to their followers, empowering both parties to fully engage in interaction and information exchange that will encourage an ever-growing, self-sustaining social economy. The principle notion is that popular and productive content creators deserve to be paid for their content, and we are strong believers that their followers will reward simple, streamlined micropayments to encourage their favorite creators to continue to create.

Regarding our relation to other social blockchain platforms, paradoxically, we are all working together through competition. Cryptocurrencies are a collaborative community above all else, however it is natural that the best systems survive this formative period and carry forward our growth. Active projects such as the Yours Network, Synero, and other lesser known projects like alexandria.io from FlorinCoin all have their benefits and promised features that could form popular platforms. However, one thing is certain that differentiates us from most of their operations: we are not seeking a holistic social media platform (text, music, pictures, etc.). Also, with regards to Steemit specifically, we likely do not envision ourselves directly competing with their already established and commendable project. Although they do feature some photos shared on the site, they are integrated within text-based blog posts. This being said, we are likely to compete more with holistic platforms like Yours or Synero as BelaCam provides a simpler way to be rewarded by sharing creative content.

As far as being disruptive to Facebook or Instagram, this is the full intention. The incentive to get many likes on Instagram is mainly driven by a human’s desire to feel important. At BelaCam, users can get that same desire satisfied while also earning money. It’s simple: BelaCam can reward users more than Instagram and Facebook can. Although we understand that personnel at these giant companies are certainly aware of cryptos, it is intriguing that they have not been more interested in incorporating a system like ours. Regardless, BelaCam will prove show the effectiveness of a monetarily incentivized photo sharing platform.

BitcoinDood – Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions. I end every interview with the same last question. Could you share any thoughts, predictions, or probabilities of where you see cryptocurrency in general heading in the future?

Ambia Fund – For The Ambia Fund, the idea of cryptocurrency is much larger than BelaCam, social media, or even online payments. It is a true economic revolution that transcends the boundaries of politics and nationality, despite being relatively young. Whether you are a libertarian supporting the movement to combat big government, or an immigrant who needs desperately to send money back home, cryptocurrencies are for you. Their ability to unite is largely what makes them so beautiful.

The development of Bitcoin and its integration into society can be viewed as commendable a collaborative feat as the completion of the Human Genome Project, or the construction of the Internet itself. In less than a decade of existence, Bitcoin and cryptos have undergone extensive tests of trials and tribulations that nearly suppressed the idea permanently. However, thanks to the resilience of the human ingenuity, we have continued to push for a better system and a better world. This undying spirit to enlighten others, to show them that there is a better way to do finance and furthermore, a better way to live life, will allow cryptocurrencies to find their own large niche in the world.

By first entering the small niche of cryptocurrencies for social media, we are simply playing our small role in the overall transition to decentralized payments and information. We have surveyed the emerging market of cryptos and observed a gaping hole for this specific industry. Bigger groups like Decentral and developers of other niche projects like Syscoin are all doing their own parts to help mankind accept cryptocurrencies in a variety of ways. After all, it will take the entire community to further propel cryptocurrencies into mainstream tech and finance.

With this being said, we have designed The Ambia Fund and its subordinate projects to be pioneers in this inevitable transition into the future. We are the most adamant believers in what cryptos can do for all of humanity. Through our projects, we are recruiting others to also believe in us and the movement. Our group is doing all we can to help cryptocurrencies create a modern, united world in which humans are truly free to use their money, talent, and knowledge.

BitcoinDood – Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. The Dood really appreciates your time and wishes you and the entire BelaCoin team the best of luck on this project and all your future endeavors. Thanks for sharing the BelaCoin story with me and my readers.

To find out more about the Ambia Fund and Belacoin, you can follow these links.

As many of you know The Dood is a huge fan of OKcash! I was talking with my cousin the other night and she expressed an interest in learning about cryptocurrency. I decided to get her and a couple other relatives started with OKcash this Christmas. It’s a strong coin, has a decent market cap for an alt, and lots of community support. Not to mention an easy to use wallet with support for most OS platforms.

IMO the best way to hand out holiday cryptocurrency would be to hand out paper wallets. However, to insure that the paper wallet had a backup I also backed it up with an image and uploaded it to a USB drive. I then placed the printed out paper wallet, and the USB stick in a gift box and wrapped it for presentation. Here’s what I did.

There are multiple themes to choose from, I selected one of the Christmas themes.

Now make sure you press the single wallet tab, then click on generate wallet and it will automatically generate the wallet for you and create a couple matching QR codes for the public and private address. Now take a screen shot of the wallet you created and save it in jpg format.

The paper wallet screen shot that was printed out and saved to USB stick

I should note, that there is a way to create a really cute paper wallet / gift card but using my Firefox browser I just couldn’t get it to print large enough. I have no idea what I was doing wrong, whether it was my printer or the browser but it just wasn’t working for me. However, taking the screen shot and printing them out almost reminded me of a stock certificate and it looked really cute with the Xmas theme. So I took the screen shot, cropped the image in Gimp however any image editing software would do, printed it out and then loaded the image onto a USB stick for a backup.

Now if you have a phone wallet, that you’ll use to load the wallets, just scan the public qr code on the printout and transfer the OKcash. Send a small amount first, then go to the blockchain and make sure it accepted it and everything is working good.

If anyone is quick enough, there’s 9 OKcash for the grabbing. Not a lot but I wanted to show a test transfer for loading the wallet.

Once the paper wallet is loaded, place in box with USB drive, wrap and give for Xmas.

What a fun way to introduce friends and family to cryptocurrency. You can do this with any cryptocurrency that offers a paper wallet. The process is pretty much the same. Thanks for reading, happy holidays, and wishing you all a prosperous New Year!

Recently I spoke with the lead dev of PoSWallet.com and we talked a little about his new project PoSW coin and of course the latest upadtes on what’s happening with PoSWallet.com

Disclaimer:The Dood loves this project and does hold a small amount of PoSW coin. Nothing in this post or blog should be taken as financial advice, seek a duly licensed financial adviser for financial advice, not some guy on the internet who refers to himself as The Dood. It should also be noted that the link at the bottom of the page is a referral link. You can read my first interview with PoSWallet.com talking about the group staking wallet here.

BitcoinDood –Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this interview. This is your second time back, and a lot has happened since the last time we spoke. For anyone new to the blog or not familiar with your projects, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about who you are, and your relationship to POSWallet.com and PoSW coin?

PoSW coin – It has been a minute – I’m glad to be invited back again for another round. I am the lead dev for PoSWallet.com – we are a group of folks that would rather use crypto than standard cash, but also understand that most everyday-folk have no idea how to compile a wallet etc. We are connecting crpyptocurrency (specifically PoS altcoins) with the masses. Furthermore, we try to make sure the website takes all of the user suggestions and implements them into an all-in-one crypto site.

BitcoinDood –So POSWallet seems to be doing great! I put a small portion of my altcoin portfolio in there and I’ve been real happy with the results. It’s so nice checking on all those POS coins and watching them grow every week. POSWallet.com was down for a few days, and I guess you suffered a major DDoS attack from what I read. You then quickly made a bunch of improvements and everything seems to be running great since. Can you talk a little about what happened, and the upgrades you made to the system?

PoSW coin – Glad to hear you are happy with the results! So we now have over 450k user addresses staking, which is around 10x what we had a few months ago during the last interview. Growth has been very fast; however, with that have come a few DDoS attacks. I am not going to get into the specifics, but we made quite a few substantial redundancy improvements to mitigate future DDoS attacks. We have also greatly improved the website speed/load times and brought nodes online across 3 different continents.

BitcoinDood –Pretty exciting times. The site’s doing great and now you’re working on a new coin project. Could you tell us a little about PoSW coin?

PoSW coin – Of course! The PoSW coin took a lot of energy in terms of figuring out how to make it worthwhile for the users. We are trying to avoid all the current buzz related to altcoins – the ICO scams, devs disappearing, coins with no intrinsic value, etc. The PoSW coin has intrinsic value, as it is essentially a share of PoSWallet.com and the profits that it generates.

At the end of every month, we will choose a payout block. Every address that holds PoSW coins on this block will receive a dividend, directly related to the total profits of PoSWallet.com for that month. The same amount of PoSW will be burned into a dev burn account to counter the inflation – this will help drive the price of PoSW up and benefit the investors.

We also have big plans for the PoSW coin at PoSWallet.com – it will essentially be the currency of the website. As we bring more features online (hint hint, an exchange might be coming) users will use PoSW as a currency.

BitcoinDood – According to the ANN the profits from the coin will be used to pay for all the hosting, server, and business costs of POSWallet.com and all extra profits will be returned to PoSW coin holders each month in the form of dividends. I guess by buying into this coin, each coin holder kind of becomes a shareholder in POSWallet.com. Am I right in thinking this, and could you also explain further on how this will work?

PoSW coin – You are exactly right – I jumped the gun a bit in the last response. Besides using the coin for features that will be coming online soon at PoSWallet.com, the PoSW coin will continue to grow in value as monthly dividends are paid out. We will take the gross profits from stakes and coin investment, subtract off the cost to run the site and buy a bunch of ramen, then pay out the rest in PoSW to the users!

BitcoinDood – Now along with earning dividends as a coin holder you will also earn 1% staking interest. Could you explain a little more about the staking feature of the coin, and how this will work?

PoSW coin – Initially, we were not going to have any staking rate for the PoSW coin; however, that would have been quite ironic – a coin used at a PoS website that doesn’t use the PoS algorithm. The staking rate is small (1%), and we like it that way. We want to control inflation and make sure our investors get the most bang for their buck.

In terms of the actual PoS algorithm – it is similar to the majority of other PoS coins.

BitcoinDood – The PoSW coin wallet will be released around the first of the year for now you can hold your coin on POSWallet.com. Could you tell us a little about the wallet release, and any interesting features the wallet will include?

PoSW coin – So we beat our initial estimates for the source code (yay!) – we are still working on the Windows wallet. We expect this to be online by the 1st of the year. We have some cool integration ideas for the wallet in future releases, for now it is just a standard wallet where you can store your PoSW.

BitcoinDood –So back to POSWallet.com. With the funding earned from PoSW coin you’re planning on making some serious improvements and changes to the POSWallet.com platform. I know you may not be able to disclose everything that you’re working on, but I’m sure the readers would love to hear about anything you’re willing to share. What can you tell us about any new features coming to the platform in the future?

PoSW coin – Exchange, exchange, exchange. This is one of the most frequently asked questions about the site: How do I exchange one coin for another? Well guess what – we are working hard on this! There are also a few more features in development (one that I think people will like even more than an exchange) but for now stay tuned!

BitcoinDood – I would consider PoSW coin an ICO offer. I do like the fact that there is actually a working Proof Of Concept with POSWallet.com. You can already see the hard work that’s been put into the project. What else separates PoSW coin from other ICO’s offers out there?

PoSW coin – This is great question – and fundamentally difficult to answer. At some point, every new coin has an ICO – users have to get coins somehow. Sometimes they are distributed for free, sometimes purchased, or mined. The biggest difference between the PoSW launch and most other ICOs is that we did the work before launching the coin – most ICOs ask for money up front then ‘forget’ to deliver.

BitcoinDood – PoSW coin is already available and I imagine the coin will also be available for trading on different exchanges. Have you been in talks with any exchanges yet? If so, can you divulge which ones we may able to trade PoSW coin on and where can people currently buy PoSW coin now?

PoSW coin – We are definitely going to be on exchanges – both Cryptopia and NovaExchange are either listed or in process of listing. We purchased the YoBit add and have started the Bittrex/Poloniex addcoin process. We definitely want to get on new exchanges (to help promote them) so if you are the owner of a new exchange, please contact me!

BitcoinDood – The Dood really appreciates you taking the time to answer these questions. Is there anything you would like to add that hasn’t already been covered in this interview? Any new features coming to POSWallet.com or maybe a cool feature of PoSW coin that I may have missed?

PoSW coin – As always, I think you did a great job with the questions. The team here is working very hard on rolling out new features – besides the exchange, we are going to keep the new stuff under wraps :).

BitcoinDood – So I usually end every interview with the same last question, but seeing this is your second interview with The Dood, let me ask you this. POSWallet.com is growing,the site is running great, and it’s user base continues to grow. If you could look into a crystal ball, what do you think the future of POSWallet.com and PoSW Coin will look like?

PoSW coin –Another tough question – the last question in the 1st interview was easier! In terms of the future of PoSWallet.com – we are going to continue to thrive. This was never meant to pay our bills, it is a labor of purpose. We truly believe that cryptocurrency is the future and we want to be the harbingers of that future. This ideology was really the driving force behind the PoSW coin – get as many people involved as possible, then pay out the profits to them so they continue to spread the word.

I have always disliked the following phrase, but it seems so applicable in this one instance. Where will the PoSW coin be in the future? To the moon, of course! 🙂

BitcoinDood – Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule during your coin launch and answering these questions. The Dood really appreciates your time and all your hard work on both POSWallet.com and PoSW coin. The Dood wishes you and the entire POSWallet team the best of luck on this project and all your future endeavors in 2017. Happy holidays, and happy new year to you and your team!

PoSW coin – Happy holidays to you as well – I am sure we will continue to be in contact!

You can use these links to find out more abouot PoSW coin and PosWallet.com. It should be noted that The Dood holds a small amount of PoSW coin and the below link to PoSWallet.com is a referral link.

Clearing the air on my Startcoin call. Last week sometime I tweeted about 3 coins I liked at the current market price. My picks were NXT, START and Feathercoin. I do love the classics. However, I also like well established coins with strong communities. All three of these coins have that. I did however take some flack for calling STARTcoin.

Now many have dubbed the last few weeks as the “Altcoin Bloodbath of 2016” The bottom line is bitcoin went up, and altcoins went down. It’s just the nature of the beast and that does seem to be what happens whenever bitcoin shows a nice spike in price. Eventually the markets do correct and the bitcoin price stabilizes and altcoin prices adjust accordingly. In my opinion this is always a good opportunity to buy into some strong coins that haven’t adjusted to the market yet. STARTcoin being an example of that.

Please note, this is my speculation, my thoughts, and not meant as financial advice.Seek a licensed financial adviser for real financial advise, not some jackass on the internet who refers to himself as The Dood.

FTC or Feathercoin has already showed a nice gain since my call at .00000743, NXT has held it’s price and I’m patiently waiting to see which direction it goes. START continues to drop. Personally, again not advice, The Dood keeps buying START and here’s my thoughts on the matter.

Many in the STARTcoin community are a little upset at Max Keiser’s call of 1 START = 1 US dollar. Many people bought into this and were really dissappointed when the price dropped and continued to drop. One factor nobody could forsee was the STARTcoin hack. I don’t know all the specifics but it was pretty bad, even effecting their social media accounts. This obviously affected the STARTcoin price.

If you don’t know who Max Keiser is, he’s the guy from the Keiser Report on RT News and also co-founder of STARTcoin and STARTjoin. When he began calling 1 START = 1 Dollar many people jumped on board the STARTcoin bandwagon only to be dissappointed as the price began to fall instead of rise. Many reasoned, Max’s celebrity status alone would indeed raise the price of STARTcoin as more and more people bought into the coin. Then the hack put the final nail in the coffin as the price dropped dramatically.

The Dood bought in a little at a time, selling the highs and lows, and like many, The Dood did end up holding the bag on a few STARTcoins. These things happen from time to time. Was it a con? Only Max knows his true intent. Regardless STARTcoin is a well established coin with a strong dev team and a strong community. Who knows what will happen in the future. Rome certainly wasn’t built in a day and this is crypto, anything is possible.

Which now brings us to the current price and the reason for the call. IMHO STARTcoin under .00001000 is a steal! Do I know for sure? Absolutely not, it’s called speculation for a reason. What I do know is the coin is established, there is still a strong community, they continue to develop and promote the product and I don’t think STARTcoin is leaving the altcoin space anytime soon. Neither The Dood, nor Max Keiser can predict with any certainty which way a market will move, we can only speculate, but STARTcoin certainly looks like a strong, well established coin in the cryptospace and keeping with my original call, “I don’t think these low prices will last forever”.

Will STARTcoin ever be $1 = 1 START? IDK. This is why you never listen to anyone, and do your own due diligence. I’m sure Max Keiser knows a little more about finance than The Dood, but like me he puts his pants on one leg at a time and he can only speculate like the rest of us. If I had a working crystal ball, I’d make us all rich, but I don’t. What I will say is I like the price of STARTcoin, the project is far from dead, and I think eventually the coin will rise again.

This post was originally posted to my Steemit on 12/14/16 If you’re on Steemit I hope you stop by my page and decide to follow The Dood. Thanks for reading.

So, I finally got over 100 followers and decided to do a steemit review. I figured once I reached a hundred followers I would have a pretty good grasp of the platform and be able to write a fair review. I’ll admit right now, when I first signed up on the platform I was more than a bit skeptical but as time progressed and I used the platform regularly I did end up falling in love with it.

For anyone that may not know what Steemit is, it’s a social network / blogging platform that pays you in cryptocurrency for your posts. Payment is made in the form of STEEM, which is the platforms cryptocurrency, and the amount you recieve is basically determined by the popularity of your posts and the amount of votes each post recieves.

I should state two things right from the start. I was more than a bit skeptical when I first signed up, and I never read the white paper.

My reasoning for not reading the white paper was simple. First off The Dood’s a bit lazy at times and this was one more white paper that I’d have to read. Also, I wanted to look at this as just another social networking platform. Most people don’t read the TOS/EULA of social sites like Pinterest, Facebook, and Google + and I wanted to approach this from an end user point of view. Most people aren’t concerned with the inner workings of their social site, they just want it to work.

With that said, my first impression was that Steemit was a sparse and under-developed platform. I did however keep in mind that the site was still in beta. This is made perfectly clear to all users with the company logo in the upper left hand corner of the site that reads, “Steemit beta”. Fair enough, they’re still working on it, and this was pretty obvious in August when I signed up.

On a side note, I actually signed up earlier with a different account but didn’t take it seriously till STEEM hit $4.00 each on the exchanges and The Dood lost his password to his original account. At that time, people were still waiting to be allowed to cash out. I had earned $50.00 but just didn’t take it seriously.You can bet I kicked myself in the ass when my 50 dollar account was now worth a couple hundred and I lost the password and couldn’t cash out. Derp! First Steemit lesson learned, guard your Steemit password just like any other cryptocurrency wallet credentials. If you lose the password there is no recovery option.

So I’ve been using the site for about 4 months since my initial rocky start. I can honestly say that the site continuosly and consistently improves with new features being added all the time. The once sparse site now allows users to include avatars, profile info in the header, sharing tools, and a way to keep track of followers along with many other improvements made over time. It’s obvious that given enough time, Steemit will not only compare but probably surpass the user experience of just about any other social site available today.

The blogging platform itself reminds me of a cross between Blogger and Reddit. You can post articles and content you create in a blog style format, and your followers can comment and share additional information with you in the comments section like on Reddit. Users have to be Steemit members in order to comment on posts and interact with other users.

The interface is user freindly and comparable to anything you might find on Blogger or WordPress. A first time user can use the built in editor to create a post, and more experienced users can use either markdown or html to format their posts. Either way the interface is fairly straight forward and intuitive allowing most people to create a well formated asthetically pleasing post on thier first attempt.

Easy to use Steemit Editor

One of the features I don’t like and that many new users seem to have a problem with is image hosting. Images have to be hosted by a third party. This is easily remedied by using a service like Imgur but it can be a little overwhelming to new users. There are however many tutorials throughout the site that teaches you how to accomplish image hosting, and the friendly users or (Steemians) are extremely helpful to new users. My understanding without reading the white paper is that each post is hosted on the blockchain, and adding images to all that data would be a burden on the blockchain.

This leads me to the people. Steemit users or Steemians are truley wonderful people. Most users are very polite, friendly, and eager to help new users get accustomed to the interface. Help is as simple as asking in a post or even leaving a comment asking for help. Most of the users I’ve interacted with on the site are very pleasant, and conversation and interaction is highly encouraged amongst users.

The community is diverse and you can find just about any topic imaginable to talk about. Topics range from politics, cooking, health and wellness, to crafts, wildlife, cryptocurrency and just about anything else your brain can think of.

As far as cryptocurrency wallets are concerned, the Steemit wallet is really easy to use.If you’re transferring STEEM to another user it’s as simple as entering their username, the amount of STEEM to send and entering your password. If you want to transfer to an exchange like Bittrex or Poloniex you just enter the exchange name and place an account number that you recieve from the exchange in the memo box so they know which wallet to put your STEEM in when it hits the exchange. This is a really easy process for people that know and understand how cryptocurrency works, but people new to cryptocurrency do seem to have a hard time getting set up on an exchange and learning how to move around cryptocurrency. Again the friendly community comes to the rescue and help is as easy as just making a post asking for people to help you. The community on Steemit is really great, friendly and helpful.

The platform wallet breaks down into four ways to save your STEEM, you can save it as STEEM, STEEM Power which increases your voting power, and STEEM dollars which are always worth one dollar of STEEM. There is also a savings account you can use to save.

This post is really about the steemit platform, but I’ve read that there are Windows and CLI or Command Line Interface wallets available for STEEM the cryptocurrency. Personally, I don’t think this is an issue unless you start to acquire thousands of dollars worth of STEEM, and some people on the platform do. Then you might want to look at other ways of securing your earnings. Leaving large amounts of cryptocurrency in an exchange is never a good idea either.

So I could go on and on about the platform and the Steemit wallet but this is a review and not meant to be a tutorial. If your really interested in how this all works I suggest you read the white paper, the link can be found at the bottom of the post. For the sake of not turning this review into a dissertation I’ll finish up with some pros and cons.

I’ll start with the cons so I can end on a positive note and because there really isn’t a huge downside to this platform. For some reason the wallet permissions give you 4 public and private key pairs. I don’t understand what these are for and have never had to use anything other than the main password. I’ve heard these are important for future upgrades and services the platform will offer. For now they’re just confusing.

New users to cryptocurrency have a hard time using exchanges and cashing out. Although most people comfortable with using cryptocurrency will find it easy and intuitive, new users get a little nervous cashing out, transferring around their crypto and signing up on a exchange. It would be nice if there was an easier way for new users, this however is a problem that faces all cryptos in general.

Post voting. I’ve experienced nothing but positive voting for the most part. I have heard some people complain about unfair voting practices when posting something controversial or extremely spammy so it’s worthy of mentioning. I’ve had a couple downvotes but never experienced what some people might refer to as “Vote Bullying”, but there are many people that complain about it. If a whale or someone who has accumulated a lot of STEEM Power in their wallet doesn’t like your post they can downvote it. The voting system may not be perfect and may need some improvements over time but for the most part it seems to work. Again the devs are always tweaking things so I’m sure if this is a problem it will be remedied eventually.

My final con and it’s a big one for me from an investors stand point. The payout structure seems fair, but I don’t understand it completely. Again, read the white paper. Now I want it understood that this isn’t sour grapes or “oh I want more STEEM for my posts”. Without naming names, some internet celebrities receive several hundred to over a thousad dollars for a single post. One guy made over $100,000 in a week posting on the platform. These payouts seem a little extreme. Some published authors don’t even make this on their first book deal. These guys are making this with blog posts. For that I say congratulations, but this isn’t my issue with it. My issue with this is that this will amount to millions of dollars of STEEM liquidity that sooner or later will be dumped back into the market. It would seem to me that if just one of these guys decided to dump all their coin, and these things happen from time to time, it would wreak havoc on the market price of STEEM. Maybe there’s something in the white paper that safeguards against this, and I know users aren’t allowed to cash out their STEEM Power all at once, but this just seems like a recipe for disaster and could explain the downward trend of STEEM since it was at $4.00 a coin back in July.

Now for the pros! There’s a lot of them. I started out as a skeptic and ended up a believer. I love the idea of people being rewarded for good original content and Steemit does that well. I love that it introduces many new people to cryptocurrency. I love the usability of the platform and the large audience you are instantly connected with. I love the simple easy to use wallet. I could go on and on with all the things I love but my suggestion would be to just sign up on the platform and see for yourself. It may take some time to build up your following, and may take some time to start earning STEEM, but in the end I think you’ll find the experience fun and rewarding.

On a final note, I would strongly encourage anyone into blogging and social networking to give the platform a try. The community is large and growing all the time, and most of the users are extremely friendly. From an investors stand point I’m real bearish on STEEM the currency. I’m watching the market closely and waiting to see a bottom start to form and consolidate before I even consider hodling as an investment long term. I hold some earnings in my wallet, transfer a small portion each day into STEEM Power, and trade the highs and lows on the exchanges regularly. Hey, a traders got to trade! It has proven to be a fun and volatile market to trade. My personal opinion is that if STEEM can maintain a healthy market, and the dev team continues to improve on the platform at the rate they currently are, Steemit should have a long healthy life in the cryptosphere. Regardless of the end, this will be a history making project that will probably change the face of social networking as we know it. Steem on brothers and sisters! Steem on!

If you want to find out more about Steemit you can use these links. Thanks for reading and hope you decide to follow me on Steemit!

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Nothing here is meant to be taken as financial advice. All information is posted strictly as opinion. Please seek a duly licensed professional for financial advice, not some guy on the internet who refers to himself as The Dood.
Many thanks to Feedspot.com for listing The Dood in their list of top 100 Bitcoin related blogs. I feel so honored to be included in your great list of cryptocurrency bloggers! You can find the complete list of bloggers here Full list here